Let’s imagine you buy a small car for $30,000 and your partner buys an SUV for $60,000. You drive them both for 200k miles, and then at that point they both have a big engine problem and need $10k of work each to fix.
At that point, spending $10k to keep the SUV going seems perhaps reasonable, because it is 1/6th of the SUVs price.
Spending 10k on the car is less reasonable because it’s a whole THIRD of the car’s purchase price! Makes much more sense to scrap it and put that money towards a brand-new car.
Therefore, people will be more likely to keep expensive vehicles for longer, scrap cheaper ones sooner, and this skews the data.
Of course, I’m not saying the vehicles in the chart are all just expensive and not reliable. Toyota Landcruser there at #1 is legendarily indestructible, for good reason. But there are other factors involved beyond pure reliability which will skew the stats.
Compared to a $20k hatchback, $60-80,000 SUVs are probably a lot more likely to:
Get regular maintenance at the dealership (and get upsold on long term maintenance things without clear immediate benefits), vs the twice a year Jiffy lube treatment
Get body work done if they are in a fender bender, vs just getting written off by insurance
Be driven by older, more experienced and safer drivers
Be stored in a garage, so the bottom of the car doesn’t rust out from road salt before they hit 200k miles
#4 is huge. I had an '89 Ford Probe. It had 330000km on it when the bottom rusted out and wasn’t worth repairing. Mechanically that thing was still perfectly sound, and probably could have put another 100k on it.
If price is an issue don’t you think people also try to keep their car as long as possible before being forced to buy a new one?
Yes, but the cost is different in relative terms.
Let’s imagine you buy a small car for $30,000 and your partner buys an SUV for $60,000. You drive them both for 200k miles, and then at that point they both have a big engine problem and need $10k of work each to fix.
At that point, spending $10k to keep the SUV going seems perhaps reasonable, because it is 1/6th of the SUVs price.
Spending 10k on the car is less reasonable because it’s a whole THIRD of the car’s purchase price! Makes much more sense to scrap it and put that money towards a brand-new car.
Therefore, people will be more likely to keep expensive vehicles for longer, scrap cheaper ones sooner, and this skews the data.
Of course, I’m not saying the vehicles in the chart are all just expensive and not reliable. Toyota Landcruser there at #1 is legendarily indestructible, for good reason. But there are other factors involved beyond pure reliability which will skew the stats.
Compared to a $20k hatchback, $60-80,000 SUVs are probably a lot more likely to:
#4 is huge. I had an '89 Ford Probe. It had 330000km on it when the bottom rusted out and wasn’t worth repairing. Mechanically that thing was still perfectly sound, and probably could have put another 100k on it.